Trouble in the Heartland

A new tick-borne disease has emerged in the US Midwest—and the culprit is not a bacterium.

| 4 min read

Register for free to listen to this article
Listen with Speechify
0:00
4:00
Share

ANDRZEJ KRAUZEIn June 2009, two male patients were independently admitted to the Heartland Regional Medical Center in northwestern Missouri with fever, headache, muscle pain, nausea, and diarrhea—all classic signs of ehrlichiosis, a common tick-borne disease in the region. Although both men reported having recently been bitten by ticks, blood and serum samples sent to microbiologist William Nicholson, chief of Pathogen Biology and Disease Ecology at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), came back negative for Ehrlichia chaffeensis, the disease-causing bacterium.

Nevertheless, Nicholson says, when the researchers plated the samples over a culture of canine tumor cells, they started to see signs of a pathogen. First, they noticed increased vacuole formation in the cells. “When we see that, within a day or two we usually see Ehrlichia,” Nicholson explains. But in this case, no Ehrlichia appeared, and the cells eventually began to fall apart. Then, the single layer of cells that lined the bottom of the flask started to detach earlier than normal—within 6–7 days, instead of 2 weeks. Nicholson and his colleagues continued to transfer the cells to fresh media, “and then it’d do it again,” he says. “That was an indication that we have something in there, we just can’t see it.”

After finding ...

Interested in reading more?

Become a Member of

The Scientist Logo
Receive full access to digital editions of The Scientist, as well as TS Digest, feature stories, more than 35 years of archives, and much more!
Already a member? Login Here

Keywords

Meet the Author

  • Jef Akst

    Jef Akst was managing editor of The Scientist, where she started as an intern in 2009 after receiving a master’s degree from Indiana University in April 2009 studying the mating behavior of seahorses.

Published In

Share
3D illustration of a gold lipid nanoparticle with pink nucleic acid inside of it. Purple and teal spikes stick out from the lipid bilayer representing polyethylene glycol.
February 2025, Issue 1

A Nanoparticle Delivery System for Gene Therapy

A reimagined lipid vehicle for nucleic acids could overcome the limitations of current vectors.

View this Issue
Considerations for Cell-Based Assays in Immuno-Oncology Research

Considerations for Cell-Based Assays in Immuno-Oncology Research

Lonza
An illustration of animal and tree silhouettes.

From Water Bears to Grizzly Bears: Unusual Animal Models

Taconic Biosciences
Sex Differences in Neurological Research

Sex Differences in Neurological Research

bit.bio logo
New Frontiers in Vaccine Development

New Frontiers in Vaccine Development

Sino

Products

Tecan Logo

Tecan introduces Veya: bringing digital, scalable automation to labs worldwide

Explore a Concise Guide to Optimizing Viral Transduction

A Visual Guide to Lentiviral Gene Delivery

Takara Bio
Inventia Life Science

Inventia Life Science Launches RASTRUM™ Allegro to Revolutionize High-Throughput 3D Cell Culture for Drug Discovery and Disease Research

An illustration of differently shaped viruses.

Detecting Novel Viruses Using a Comprehensive Enrichment Panel

Twist Bio